Technology to speed up large-scale education reforms in India: Analysts

IITs across locations are working on “digital convergence” and “development of innovative infrastructure for education”, said Bhattacharyya.

India’s education sector will see increased use of newage technologies such as cloud computing to virtual reality, as the government looks to implement large-scale reforms such as Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education (RISE) scheme.

Union Government has earmarked Rs 1 lakh crore as expenditure for RISE scheme.

While technology-enabled initiatives or platforms in line with massive open online courses (MOOC) such as Swayam (for teachers’ training) have seen use of technologies, the government should look to step up the use of tools such as virtual lab, virtual reality (VR)-enabled classrooms or curated online content for both students and teachers, analysts widely said.

Swayam, an online life-long training platform developed with the help of Microsoft, or Diksha, a platform that aids teachers with digital and tech-based teaching solutions, are “prominent efforts” in revamping the education infrastructure.

“Digitising education has been an imperative keeping in mind the affordability, accessibility, inclusiveness of the large trainable youth population. Technology may be used to reach the diverse population at the remotest corners. MOOC platforms, NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) are already in use for promotion of higher technical education. They may be used for reaching out to school children as well,” said Sriman Kumar Bhattacharyya, deputy director, IIIT, Kharagpur.

He added that IITs across locations are working on “digital convergence” and “development of innovative infrastructure for education” which could result in increased use of new-age technologies.

Software major Microsoft, which is working with Atal Tinkering Labs across 25 schools in the country to empower students and teachers with technology skills, is also pushing for the use of cloud computing for creating an efficient digital lab experience.

Pratik Mehta, director sales at Microsoft India, said technologies are fast finding ways into the classrooms in multiple ways such as mobile devices giving students “access to the latest teacher curated content”, VR-enabled classrooms offering students “an enhanced learning experience”.

Apart from the Rs 1 lakh crore expenditure estimates for RISE spread over four years, the government has increased the overall expenditure estimate for education by 4%and it grew by more than 11%in 2017-18. Despite a growth in Budgetary expenditure allocation, many projects have seen delayed implementation and use of funds. Going forward, analysts said, technology will play a key role to speed up implementation of education reforms.

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